Meet your MDL: Kelly Schultz
Kelly Schultz (she/her) is a Data Librarian at the Map & Data Library (MDL). She supports faculty, staff, and students with qualitative data analysis and data visualization. She is also the teaching coordinator at MDL and offers various instruction sessions for classes and open workshops, as well as one-on-one consultation support. She previously worked as a Data & GIS Librarian at the University of British Columbia (UBC), and prior to that as a subject librarian for Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Oxford. She has a Bachelor of Applied Science (Computer Engineering) and a Master of Information, both from the University of Toronto.
Learn more about Kelly in our Q&A below and check out her upcoming teaching sessions.
Q: Which emerging technology or trend in your field excites you the most?
A: One area that I’m focused on right now is the use of AI for qualitative data analysis. This is a topic I’m getting asked about a lot in my consultations and workshops. I think that this will potentially have a big impact on the field, with many new tools and integrations into existing tools coming out, but there’s also a potential for confusion, misuse, or over-reliance. I've been supporting CRIS with their offering of two webinars and upcoming workshops on this topic (see this blog post for links to the webinars), I’ve been attending a webinar series on this topic offered by MAXQDA, and I’ve been invited to speak on this topic myself in February.
Q: What's your favorite tool that’s available at MDL?
A: One of my favourite tools that I support at MDL is Gephi. Gephi is a free, open-source, point-and-click network visualization and analysis tool. Humanities researchers might like to explore the potential of this tool to conceptualize relationships between historical figures. Social Science researchers might want to use it to explore interactions between different social groups in society. Scientists might want to use it to visualize a citation analysis to identify trends in new research areas. The tool has something for everyone! I offer workshops each term on its use and provide a guide with a past workshop recording and tutorials on getting started.
Q: How do you collaborate with other departments and libraries on campus?
A: I collaborate with instructors, librarians, and other groups on campus in a number of ways. For example, I collaborated with an instructor in Earth Sciences, Dr. Sarah Peirce, to develop Quercus modules on best practices for creating infographics, to support classroom assignments. These modules have been made available in a Quercus Sandbox so that other instructors can include them in their Quercus courses. If you are an instructor with an infographic assignment in your course, feel free to reach out and discuss this further and be given access to the Sandbox.
Related to this, I’ve also collaborated with a couple of classes to host showcases of top infographic assignments, with more classes coming on board in the future.